Global warming can now align different weather systems at the perfect time. It can also cause the moon to be full at high tide for added effect. There is now nothing global warming can’t do. I am in awe! Now I know how the true believers feel. It’s almost …………..divine!

I discovered a new positive climate feedback. Burning fossil fuels releases CO2 which causes global warming. Global warming causes hurricanes. Hurricanes hit populated areas and knock out the power grid. All the people that believe in global warming then run gasoline powered generators, releasing more CO2, until the power grid comes back on.

Well, that was inferred from his recent (today’s) comment when he says something is causing ‘these extreme weather events”. As a politician he has probably not specifically come out on either side excepting his ‘posturing’ to what looks like on the surface as support for conclusions congruent with CAGW philosophy.

Most things in life are not black and white. It is quite possible that anthropogenic CO2 has affected the climate, and therefore hurricane Sandy in some way.

What’s not clear is the magnitude or type of effect. I think it was Judith Curry that noted that one probably effect of warmer Atlantic ocean is to move the formation of hurricanes over closer to Africa, which would cause a higher percentage of hurricanes to stay mid-Atlantic rather than have USA landfall.

I think a list of this nature to be expanded to a greater degree or time frame would be a good idea.

When one sees his/her name clearly in the CAGW camp and published as such it would be a wake up call.

To find that one’s opinions and views are being compiled into a format that reveals where they stand / their beliefs on this issue may seperate the “me too” s to think rationally. I can see a lot of value in this approach.

I would hope we could all agree that storm frequency should decrease in a (for the sake of argument) warming world, since the temperature gradient from tropics to poles should presumably decrease. As noted on this blog recently, colder planets have higher wind speeds.

If (again FTSOA) tropical & temperate zone ocean temperatures increase, the strength of the less frequent storms could increase. However, late season Sandy formed over cooler water & when it made landfall was not hurricane strength (wind speed in 50 kt range, not 72). Not to mention that subtropical Atlantic SSTs don’t show any more warming than the planet as a whole these long 16 years & counting. (Please correct me if wrong about these regional data.)

What made it (in popular imagination) a Frankenstorm was its collision with an unseasonably early cold air mass. This half of the equation does not compute with global warming, except via hilarious gymnastic contortions (associated with the need for “climate change” rather than “global warming” to maintain the myth of human culpability, hence grant dollars, Euros, etc).

In fact, it’s history is no different, indeed less dramatic than earlier pre-human carbonated air storms. To me, this looks like QED, but maybe that’s just me.

30 Oct: Sydney Morning Herald: Peter Hannam with Reuters: Sandy has lessons for Australia, BoM says
Scientists are ***reluctant to attribute any single weather event to the effects of global warming. Climate models, though, predict fewer – but more intense – major storms such as cyclones or hurricane
“This is the sort of thing we’re warning about increasing over time,” Dr Braganza said. “We are breaking records across metrics where we’d expect to break records as the planet warms.”…
Dr Will Steffen, a member of the Australian Climate Commission, noted that Sandy is only a category 1 hurricane, but the damage will likely be significant because of its huge size and the fact that its landing coincided with a high tide.
“Sea-level rises – the observed sea-level rise around the world over the past century, and the projections for further rises – are related to climate change,” Dr Steffen said.
“It is the combination of sea-level rise, storm surge (like the one coming in from Sandy on the eastern USA coast) and high tides that lead to the worst flooding events.”
“The point here is that even modest rises in sea-level – of just tens of centimetres – can lead to much higher probabilities of high sea-level events,” Dr Steffen said.http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/sandy-has-lessons-for-australia-bom-says-20121030-28gyg.html

JOE BASTARDI on Fox News: My father [also a meteorologist] used to call it “the shortcut storm.” He said he was confident he would see it before his days were numbered, and he’s finally seen it, okay? That’s the first thing. Second thing is, get used to it along the East Coast. Maybe not this kind of track, but we are in a perilous time because the Atlantic’s warm; the Pacific’s cold. It’s the 1950s all over again. It has nothing to do with global warming, it has everything to do with nature, and then we’ll go back to where we were in the sixties and seventies.
Do you realize we had ten major hurricanes run the Eastern Seaboard between ’54 and 1960? Six of them in ’54 and ’55 — six hurricane hits — from North Carolina northward. So, you know, the old Bachman-Turner song, “You ain’t seen nothing yet”? If anything, I was too quick on the gun several years ago when I said we were gonna see this type of thing.

It seems improbable. Hurricane Hazel generated 100mph winds, increasing to 150mph when it reached Carolina destroying entire towns -with storm surge of 14.5 feet, passed through Washington, Pennsylvania and New York and then onto Ontario where it met a cold front, and it maintained its intensity – category 4 – all the way.. All this after killing 1000 people in Haiti, and that was in 1954.

Of course, we don’t know, partly due to increased technology and modern communications, how considerable hurricanes were prior to the 19th century

One thing that needs to be hammered home. This was NOT a big hurricane. It WAS a bad thing, no doubt. But many people in the path are now saying “That wasn’t so bad”. When a really bad storm does hit, they may well ignore the warnings. This is the real danger of calling this thing a “Frankenstorm”.
Really bad storm. Yes.
Unprecedented. No.
Worst. No.
I seem to remember a tale from my childhood that is apropos here. Something about crying wolf. No matter what side of this argument you support.

“Reuters) – Sandy, one of the biggest storms ever to hit eastern United States, flooded servers of Datagram Inc in New York City, bringing down several media websites it hosts, including Huffington Post and Gawker.”

Reuters is of course playing the alarmist game but Huff Post out is an ironic result…

It was a Cat. 1 storm. This is insane. As someone said, the landing on a full moon at high tide was big. The wind damage was minor, because …. it was a Cat 1 storm. Couple that with the nice funnel into NYC and you get storm surge.

I’m glad to see links to what these people are supposed to have said. But when I followed through, it didn’t seem to correspond very well:
1. Hansen – I couldn’t see anything in Revkin’s article quoting him on Sandy, or even on hurricanes
2. Pielke – the article just talked about the cost of past hurricanes – nothing about cause
3. Hayhoe and North comes from a Fox News article. But what do the quotes say?
Hayhoe:“Add to that the temperature of the Atlantic Ocean, which is about 2 degrees warmer on average than a century ago, said Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University. Warm water fuels hurricanes.”
Well, the sea is warmer. And North:“While components of Sandy seem connected to global warming, “mostly it’s natural, I’d say it’s 80, 90 percent natural,” said Gerald North, a climate professor at Texas A&M University. “These things do happen, like the drought. It’s a natural thing.”
Yet Hayhoe does in to one list, North into the other.

AGW couldn’t “cause” a storm any more than water could cause a storm. The question is: “What effect does human caused climate warming have on certain types of important weather events?” Is anybody here really proposing that the answer is “None”? JP

The Governor of New York, self proclaimed friend of Al Gore says in one interview that this is the new normal, that we have to get used to more extreme and more frequent events, that 100 year storms now happen every two years, and in 10 seconds later says how no one has ever seen anything like this before……Make up your mind. Either it happens all the time, or no one can remember it happening.

Of course, until it got close to land. There was never a tropical storm or hurricane warning posted for NJ etc. Personally, given the eye on radar as it approached NJ, I think it probably was still mostly a hurricane at landfall, but certainly became extratropical soon thereafter.

It really doesn’t matter much – either way the waves on Long Beach Island came over the dunes, down the street and into Barnegat Bay.

“If the candidates won’t listen to the voters demanding they break their climate silence, maybe they will listen to Mother Nature’s October Surprise. We know the candidates will be asked about Hurricane Sandy, and will express their sympathy with those affected. They will rightly applaud the first responders, the compassion of neighbors, and the strength and resolve of the American people. But what their role as national leaders demands that they also do is explain that Hurricane Sandy is a true Frankenstorm, a monster created by man tampering with nature with oil, coal, and gas pollution.”

He’ll say more later, but for now “…There’s so much more to say about Sandy–including how the storm may have been influenced by climate change–but I’ll save this for later posts, as it’s time to get something posted…”

Pressure was 940 stop focusing on the winds. NJ shore absolutely obliterated. NYC did have a higher surge than ever recorded, its not just a bad storm its one of the all time greats. Its probably the Mid Atlantic’s Hurricane of 1938, at least New Jersey. Wind gusts in New England were in the low 80’s. Still right now bands are rotating into Southeast New England, wind gusts are over 50 mph on Lake Michigan. Many areas over 2 feet of snow in West Virginia. No it was not caused by global warming but quit down playing the storm by looking at scattered weather observations and actually look at the destruction caused.

This is a synoptic set up over land meteorologists never get to see. Let’s not forget the damage caused in the Caribbean before Sandy headed north. Can you name a Hurricane in recent memory that hooked so rapidly west while being infused by a baroclinic zone due to a strong negatively tilted Arctic trough? Meanwhile the NAO is in a deeply negative phase enhancing the pressure gradient and blocking the usual track out to sea. All the while a blizzard rages on the cold air advection side of the storm.

Do people really think the sustained winds and wind gusts measured in the Great Hurricanes of the past are all 100 percent accurate? Why on earth would you claim Sandy wasn’t a Hurricane…plenty of wind gusts were over hurricane force and the storm surge was consistent of a category 3 hurricane. Sandy will take its place alongside Katrina, Andrew, Hazel, 1938, 1935, and 1900 in the most significant storms since 1900.

Global warming (caused by fossil fuel use) is responsible for my bad breath and thinning hair, and I intend to sue all the major oil companies for turning me into the thoroughly unpleasant person I have become!

Most of the pseudo-scientists preaching the “global warming is causing severe weather” gospel are on the government dole. They depend on taxpayer-funded grants for their survival. If the AGW theory goes belly up (we can only hope it will happen soon), the research grants dry up. There lies their true motivation: keeping the grant money flowing. Their end-of-days rhetoric has nothing to do with saving the planet, which is quite capable of taking care of itself — with or without man’s presence.

I’m sure the way CAGW acolytes account for CO2 lagging temperature increases, Hurricane Sandy is in response to future warming. And since it hit Atlantic City, the odds are much better than even that this is so.

The subject came up as an example of planetary storms in the “astronomy news hour” here. A professor noted that storms of this size occur on the earth extremely frequently. But the earth is big so they usually miss New York City.

I do believe it was, if not a result of climate change, a precursor of climate change. More precisely, I surmise it to be a sort of “standing wave” or constructive interference as a result of a type of ringing or overshoot … ringing or overshoot at the end of the interglacial.

Wait, isn’t there something unacceptable about compiling a list of scientists and a quick estimate of which side of a question they believe? I mean, I thought there was some reason Anderegg et al were not supposed to do that?

There is something odd about this year’s freeze up. The big melt (or was it hypercompression) this summer / fall may have been the calm before the storm as it were. This will be fascinating to observe.

29 Oct: SBS Australia: Source: The Conversation: Hurricane Sandy ‘mixes super-storm conditions with climate change’
By Kevin Trenberth, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
The sea surface temperatures along the Atlantic coast have been running at over 3C above normal for a region extending 800km off shore all the way from Florida to Canada. Global warming contributes 0.6C to this. With every degree C, the water holding of the atmosphere goes up 7%, and the moisture provides fuel for the tropical storm, increases its intensity, and magnifies the rainfall by double that amount compared with normal conditions.
Global climate change has contributed to the higher sea surface and ocean temperatures, and a warmer and moister atmosphere, and its effects are in the range of 5 to 10%. Natural variability and weather has provided the perhaps optimal conditions of a hurricane running into extra-tropical conditions to make for a huge intense storm, enhanced by global warming influences…http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1706035/Hurricane-Sandy-mixes-super-storm-conditions-with

30 Oct: CBS Local Denver: NCAR Scientist Worries About Daughter While He Tracks Sandy
PHOTO CAPTION: Kevin Trenberth at NCAR talks with his daughter during Hurricane Sandy (credit: CBS)
Distinguished senior scientist Kevin Trenberth with the NCAR says Sandy is something else, and he’s been glued to his computer.
“The unique thing about this storm compared with a normal hurricane is the size is twice as big,” Trenberth said.
He says it will cause extensive flooding that many won’t be able to escape.
“It’s coming into one of the most populated areas in the world, and the number of people that are affected by this storm is perhaps unprecedented,” Trenberth said.http://denver.cbslocal.com/2012/10/30/ncar-scientist-worries-about-daughter-while-he-tracks-sandy/

Regardless, it is the most unambiguous thing he’s ever written, so it stood out. Most of the time he kicks you off the sled and tells you to follow dog poo until you get to Dawson City or at least equally unhelpful blurbs.

29 Oct: Christian Science Monitor: Superstorm Sandy Liveblog
The Huffington Post’s Tom Zeller quotes Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the USA National Center for Atmospheric Research, who describes Sandy as representing “the new normal.”
“The past few years have been marked by unusually severe extreme weather characteristic of climate change.” Trenberth told HuffPo. “The oceans are warmer and the atmosphere above the oceans is warmer and wetter. This new normal changes the environment for all storms and makes them more intense and with much more precipitation.”…http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/1029/Superstorm-Sandy-Liveblog-Did-the-White-House-respond-too-quickly-video

“100 year storms now happen every two years”
They first have to become once every 99 years and progress to ever higher frequency. They don’t just jump to once every 2 years. Even the IPCC says increase of frequency of events is not seen in the data.

31 Oct: WestAustralian: AAP: Seth Borenstein: Scientist predicted New York flooding
CLIMATE scientist Michael Oppenheimer stood along the Hudson River and watched his research come to life as Hurricane Sandy blew through New York.
Just eight months earlier, the Princeton University professor reported that what used to be once-in-a-century devastating floods in New York City would soon happen every three to 20 years.
He blamed global warming for pushing up sea levels and changing hurricane patterns…
Some parts of Sandy and its wrath seem to be influenced by climate change, several climate scientists said.
First, there’s sea level rise. Water levels around New York are nearly 0.3 metre higher than they were 100 years ago, said Penn State University climate scientist Michael Mann.
Add to that the temperature of the Atlantic Ocean, which is about .8 degrees Celsius warmer on average than a century ago, said Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University.
Warm water fuels hurricanes.
Sandy zipped north along a warmer-than-normal Gulf Stream that travels from the Caribbean to Ireland, said Jeff Masters, meteorology director for the private service Weather Underground…
Normally there are 11 named Atlantic storms. The past two years have seen 19 and 18 named storms. This year, with one month to go, there are 19.
After years of disagreement, climate scientists and hurricane experts have concluded that as the climate warms, there will be fewer total hurricanes. But those storms that do develop will be stronger and wetter…
Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University, an expert in how a warming Arctic affects extreme weather patterns, said recent warming in the Arctic may have played a role in enlarging or prolonging that high pressure area.
However, she cautioned it’s not clear that happened with Sandy.
While components of Sandy seem connected to global warming, “mostly it’s natural, I’d say it’s 80, 90 per cent natural,” said Gerald North, a climate professor at Texas A&M University…
On Tuesday, both New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Governor Andrew Cuomo said extreme events like Sandy are causing them more trouble.
“What is clear is that the storms that we’ve experienced in the last year or so, around this country and around the world, are much more severe than before,” Bloomberg said.
“Whether that’s global warming or what, I don’t know. But we’ll have to address those issues.”
Cuomo called the changes “a new reality.”
“Anyone who says that there’s not a dramatic change in weather patterns I think is denying reality,” Cuomo said.
“I told the president the other day: ‘We have a 100-year flood every two years now.”‘
For his published research, Oppenheimer looked at New York City’s record flood of 1821.
Sandy flooded even higher…
Oppenheimer walked from his Manhattan home to the river on Monday evening to watch the storm.
“We sort of knew it could happen but you know that’s different from actually standing there and watching it happen,” Oppenheimer said.
“You don’t really imagine what this looks like until you see it.”http://www.perthnow.com.au/news/breaking-news/scientist-predicted-new-york-flooding/story-e6frg13l-1226507354539

30 Oct: Washington Times: PICKET: Al Gore blames Hurricane Sandy on ‘global warming’
New York and New England were hit with powerful hurricanes in 1821 and 1938. In 1821, the hurricane was called, The Great September Gale. In 1938, the hurricane, aptly named the Long Island Express, slammed New York and New England with winds of up to 120 MPH. The Berkshire Eagle lists other hurricanes and tropical storms dating back to 1635 that have hit the east coast.
Is Mr. Gore saying that these massive hurricanes were caused by some form of man-made global warming…really? Please.http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2012/oct/30/picket-al-gore-blames-hurricane-sandy-global-warmi/

The fact is that ocean temperature anomalies were on the order of 2 degrees and warmer. Statistically, a percentage of that is due to anthropogenic warming. It’s really not that difficult of a question,

Seth Borenstein AP is once more serving as the MSM frontman for the Alarmist hoax team with the usual misrepresentations about temperatures and sea level heights.He neglects to tell the readers how sea level has been and is supposed to be increasing ever since the current ice age was interrupted by the warming climates of the present Inter-Glacial. It is also remarkable how Seth Borenstein omitted mention of how the sea level has been observed to uncharacteristically not increase significantly and/or ever so slightly decline in the recent decade or longer.

Seth Borenstein also neglected to report how the temperature changes in the Gulfstream relate to thecyclical switch in temperature regimes between the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean.While one ocean increases in temperature, the other ocean decreases in temperature. They tend to offset each other with any residdual differences resulting in an overall change in global average of seawater temperatures.

In other words, Seth Borenstein is conveying yet more of the same discredited climate propaganda.

For sake of Alarmists surfing here — Let us suppose for a moment there is Anthropological Global Warming or Human induced Climate Change (HiCC) or whatever Alarmists are calling it this month…

What proof** do you Alarmists have that Hurricane Sandy was made worse by your claimed AGW? Is it not just as possible that Hurricane Sandy was lessened in strength by your claimed HiCC?
Put another way; Why is everything Alarmists contribute to man-made Climate Challenges – bad, worse, or devastating?

Bloomberg and Cuomo blame Hurricane Sandy on climate change
PUBLISHED: 21:48, 30 October 2012 | UPDATED: 00:20, 31 October 2012http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-2225484/Hurricane-Sandy-Michael-Bloomberg-Andrew-Cuomo-blame-hurricane-climate-change.html
New York governor Andrew Cuomo and mayor Michael Bloomberg both pointed to climate change as the culprit for Sandy’s ravages as they addressed the scale of the destruction on Tuesday morning.
[…]
At a press conference in Manhattan on Tuesday, Cuomo said he had told President Obama that ‘we have a 100-year flood every two years now’.
He added: ‘There has been a series of extreme weather incidents. That is not a political statement. That is a factual statement.
‘Anyone who says there’s not a dramatic change in weather patterns, I think is denying reality.’
[…]
‘Whether that’s global warming or what, I don’t know, but we’ll have to address those issues.’

And as you might expect, it would be much quicker to list the people over at Huffpo and ThinkProgress that don’t believe Sandy was man-made. Expect to see much more like this:

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4343312.html
Climate change likely contributed to Sandy’s rage, with sea temperatures off the Atlantic U.S. coast being far above average. But hurricanes and storms have also occurred in the past for entirely natural reasons.
Stephan Lewandowsky

Jerky says:
October 30, 2012 at 8:34 pm
The fact is that ocean temperature anomalies were on the order of 2 degrees and warmer. Statistically, a percentage of that is due to anthropogenic warming. It’s really not that difficult of a question,

The fact is you don’t know the difference between a temperature anomoly and your place where the climate does not shine. Otherwise, you would be able to identify the alleged “2 degrees” temperature anomoly between what, what, and what. Of course, then you would have to explain how you identified an anthropogenic causee in a 2 degree increase in temperature when the alleged anthropogenic contribution to global average temperatures is alleged to be less than a single whole degree. That too presents a rather impossible problem to solve given how the temperature measuring instrumentation was not capable of being anymore accurate than a half degree, one degree, or more than one degree Fahrenheit depending upon the instrument.

As for your claim about being warmer statistically, such a remark is laughable. I’ll let you wonder why while the rest of us chuckle.

For the likes of Gore, Chrissy, Clinton, Rbarr, …
You Alarmists are pseudo-correct that humans have made hurricanes worse. Made worse, only in the sense that humans have propagated to the point where even a wimpy (no offense Sandy) Category 1 hurricane can not make landfall without doing damage.

Realizing the U.S. population has more than doubled over that past 60 years, resulting in large cities and more cities – in essence increasing the chances a hurricane will do damage. In that same 60 years, people have become more dependent on technology, and less self-sufficient (sad to say) – in essence increasing the impact of a hurricane.

Finally, there is no denying advances in technology have made dissemination of a hurricane’s impact far more reaching and detailed – in essence alarming. Alarmists can blame Gore for inventing the Internet, without it we would be blissfully unaware, other than perhaps what Walter Cronkite described on the evening news and the fuzzy b/w pictures in your daily newspaper.

Note how those claiming an association between Sandy and AGW fail to cite any actual evidence whatsoever. They simply jump on the bandwagon even before anyone has had any opportunity to collect or analyze any evidence that is specific to Sandy. And they completely ignore the analysis of other severe weather events that has shown no association with AGW.

Sky News UK was interviewing a science type gentleman who stated that “the jury is still out” but at further insistence from the reporter suggested that the increase in sea level due to global warming may have contributed to the impact of the storm …!

HEARING BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS – FIRST SESSION
OCTOBER 7, 2005

Witnesses:
Brigadier General David L. Johnson (ret.)
Director of NOAA’s National Weather Service.
Mr. Max Mayfield
Director of the National Weather Service’s National Hurricane Center.

Page 32…

…
Today, many more people live in hurricane prone areas than during the last period of high tropical activity, meaning that today’s storms will affect more people and cause more damage than historical storms.
…

———
Well, that seems to say it all as if everyone did not already realize it. Their testimony seems to also be strictly AMO related. However, tagged environmental activists are too dense to see these simple relationships. If you ever want to identify one, you know, for the list, just home in on these simple flaws common to their logic.

If you build on a beach, on an ocean water front, it’s neat I’m sure, but one day you will also reap what you sowed. I do feel sorry for all of those affected, my heart goes out to them, however, they must also bear the blame for their plight, it was their decision. After all, this is still a free country, no one put you there. Help them, of course, wish I could travel there right now to lend a helping hand.

David Ball says:
October 30, 2012 at 5:40 pm
Has it been established that Sandy was a “Hurricane”?

This is what bugs me about the whole Sandy thing. Certainly it looks like a hurricane as it springs to life in the Caribbean, but by the time it gets to the Carolinas the cyclone really looks like it had become disorganized. No eye, lopsided, with the huge winter storm over the Appalachians making a beeline for the barometric low that now is a tropical depression. As the two merge, the center of cyclonic motion gets pulled into the larger Nor’easter. But I really don’t care what all the weather hacks are saying about the ‘size’ of Sandy the ex-hurricane, but it really didn’t look like much of anything once it passed Florida.

Some said that the barometric low was the lowest ever recorded, while others said it tied the New England Express of 1938. Either way the record was like all other ‘records’, by a tiny bit of a millibar. All the hoopla about the storm’s size is only because satellites could see how big it was. But the big storm, just looking at the animations is a hybrid. But a hurricane?

I see they are still NOT listening to Dr. Chris Landsea. remember him? Of course you do. That; Kevin E. Trenberth is a [snip]. I see that this time around he is not sure, or ask another question. I bet he would love to call another press conference.

“The science is pretty clear Joshua. There is heating in the pipeline.
heating we can do NOTHING to mitigate. We are seeing the effects of climate change today, there is nothing we can do except adapt in the short term. Stop being anti science.
The frankenstorm is directly tied to global warming.
There is heat in the pipe.
We will see more frankenstorms that mitigation can do nothing to stop.
Adapt now.”

Probably the largest athropogenic effect on Sandy, was reduced urban aerosols over recent decades. Urban aerosols are known to decrease hurricane intensity substantially. With a secondary contribution from increased SSTs downwind from these urban areas on the US east coast, through increased solar insolation from decreased aerosol seeded clouds.

You can blame the catalytic converters and similar measures, like coal power station scrubbers for significantly contributing to Sandy’s intensity.

If we had extreme planetary glaciation like was found billions of years ago, there wouldn’t have been enough open water to allow a storm like Sandy. There wouldn’t have been enough of a temperature gradient and enough available energy either.

Global warming gave us Hurricane Sandy. And still I WANT MORE WARMING. I’d rather seek shelter from a strong storm on occasion than try to survive on top of a mile-thick ice sheet with no food anywhere.

Well I expect there will be some shifty semantics around the meaning of cause.

Let me see now. Let’s say someone crashes into a tree with their car. It’s quite valid I guess to say that this happened because they depressed the accelerator to much. On the other hand to reject the notion that the cause was that they were having a heart attack at the time, —because—-, it was the accelerator being depressed, is just perverse.

By the way, I notice only warmists activists are called activists but some how climate skeptic activists are not call activists in that table.

REPLY: This is because with the exception of Pat Michaels, who now works with Cato, those on the right side don’t belong to NGO activist organizations. In retrospect, I probably should have made some labels clearer, such as for Dr. James Hansen, which could read “arrested activist”.

It takes a lot of chutzpah to accuse some folk of saying Sandy was “caused” by AGW while offering links as ‘proof’ which contradict your claims. There is a significant difference between claiming warming factors look to be enhancing storms,and saying they ’caused’ them.

Even though (they said) Sandy is one of the worst hurricane during 100 years but I think it is probably not the worst in mankind’s history. Well I’m also kind of unsure about global warming. It’s just a result of 100+ years research time (in comparison with our earth’s (too long) age). However I do agree about green living and eco-lifestyle. Let’s just reduce our greediness and be kind to our mother nature. God bless. Amen.

John Parsons says:
October 30, 2012 at 6:36 pm
AGW couldn’t “cause” a storm any more than water could cause a storm. The question is: “What effect does human caused climate warming have on certain types of important weather events?” Is anybody here really proposing that the answer is “None”? JP

The answer is virtually none, meaning the influence is so very small as to be virtually undetectable and negligible in its outcome. It is sort of like asking yes or no to the question of whether an ant or a human being who falls into the sea causes the sea water to warm, the sea level to rise, and global warming to ensue as a consequence. How can you tell the difference between Hurricane/Tropical Storm Sandy and any of its predecessors in 1954, 1938, 1780, 1635, or any of the other great storms before the advent of the industrial age?

I originally put this in the previous thread, but I’ll repost it here since this thread is more appropriate. NASA “scientist” (I use the word losely; his scientific skills are meh at best) Dr Phil Plait, the “bad astronomer”, posted a weasel-like “it isn’t but it is” link between Sandy and global warming:

I posted there a criticism and a link to Dr Pielke Jr’s article about Chris Landsea, on why scientists harm their credibility by making these linkages; I thought Dr Pielke Jr would be less provocative as he is not a climate skeptic. But no, my post was deleted. I made a later comment under the name “Spence_EU” using hidemyass asking why he deleted my earlier comment; this one got posted, but no answer. It seems Dr Plait is happy to post up pseudoscience, but links to actual scientists active in the field get deleted. Go figure.

Hurricanes are made and kept alive by energy/temperature difference between sea and atmosphere, mostly around both sides of equator.
Closer to the poles the storms are mostly made and kept alive by air masses with energy/temperature difference.

The long slow process of the Earth trying in vain to reach equilibrium sees the warm waters of three large solar cycles and a very big El Nino meandering northward. The warmth is meeting its match impinging on the ice of the far north and dumping heat to space. Sandy just released to space a couple of ergs and maybe a few jules and most likely some calories. These precious items are not being replaced at the moment as our energy supplier is on holidays for the forseeable future. Sandy can be looked upon as a bigass heat pump cooling the last warm waters in the north. Equilibrium is never possible for our planet and thus we have weather, at times less than conducive for us fragile creatures. That some people can blame weather on people, say’s much about their thought processes and even more about their scientific knowledge and research capabilities. I can only shake my head in wonder.

The fact is that ocean temperature anomalies were on the order of 2 degrees and warmer. …

Cite? Reference?

Bob Tisdale’s August SST post at WUWT sets it out.

Forgive me, I’m a little confused with your comments regarding Tisdales’ August chart. It looks to me as if the entire Caribbean as well as the gulfstream from the tip of Florida to up past Hatteras is neutral in the SST anomaly temps as shown. Since Sandy followed this path, but didn’t linger above Hatteras for long before turning westward over land, how would the positive temperature anomaly shown north east of Sandy’s path affect her strength? I was under the impression that it is the ocean temperature and the amount of time that the heating under the eyewall convective area occurs is what governs a hurricanes potential strength. Sandy’s path saw none of this anomaly. Perhaps the anomalies had changed by late October and I was referred to the the wrong chart. Otherwise, I’m unable to rectify the statement about a 3 degree gulfstream anomalous SST having much of anything to do with this particular hurricane’s behavior.

The wonder is not that the storm hit and subways were flooded, but rather the wonder is that so many years passed without the hit occurring.

I can remember sitting around as a somewhat destructive young man, plotting “perfect storms” and “worse-case-scenareos,” and “the-storm-that-flooded-NYC-subways” was only one of many disasters we imagined occurring. We did that back in 1971.

If we “could see it coming” forty years ago, then wiser people could see it would happen as well. I can only suppose it was decided building some sort of water barriers was deemed too expensive.

Now NYC has a big mess to clean up. I hope they use the opportunity to build an amazing new subway. The danger, of course, is that the “bad-sort” get involved in the rebuilding. If that happens then what will be built will be an inferior boondoggle with sub-standard materials and leaks and falling ceilings, like Boston’s “Big Dig.” On the other hand, this could be a chance for New Yorkers to prove they are better than Bostonians.

In either case, I doubt a .6 degree rise in temperatures and 5 centemeter rise in sea levels had much to do with the flooded subways.

Yeah right, so Storm Sandy was caused by global warming. Warming right? Which is why it happened right at the end of October – well known as being the HOTTEST month of the year and right at the very PEAK of hurricane season. All that hot weather and AGW – the earth simply couldn’t take it.

Also Autumn high tides and areas of high population density are CAUSED by AGW. It is a well known fact proven by consensus amongst all the “right” people. /sarc_off

There appears to be a psychological aspect here – some people are always disposed to blame anything that happens on their behavior or someone behavior and that the behavior somehow brought any problems down on them. In the early civilizations it was angering the gods, in early Christian times it something that had brought down God’s displeasure, now we have scientists with the same psychological need to blame chance events, laying the blame on carbon dioxide.

“The Great Storm of 1703 was the most severe storm or natural disaster ever recorded in the southern part of Great Britain. It affected southern England and the English Channel on the 26-27 November (December 7-8 in the modern calendar)”……

…..”The storm, unprecedented in ferocity and duration, was generally reckoned by witnesses to represent the anger of God—in recognition of the “crying sins of this nation”, the government declared 19 January 1704 a day of fasting, saying it “loudly calls for the deepest and most solemn humiliation of our people”.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Storm_of_1703

Obviously this storm was NOT caused by Global Warming – it was caused by a previous God also angry at mankind’s behavior. The cure therefore was not to cripple power generation it was to have a day of fasting – which is just as (in)effective at stopping large storms.

The people on the left column are just displaying an atavistic tendency of attempting to find someone to blame for random events. In Salem it was witches.

“The Impact of Climate Change on Natural Disasters” (http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/RisingCost/rising_cost5.php): “Climate change may not be responsible for the recent skyrocketing cost of natural disasters …” “As a result, global warming may cause the temperature difference between the poles and the equator to decrease. And as the difference decreases, so should the number of storms, says George Tselioudis, a research scientist at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and Columbia University.” “If we are creating an atmosphere more loaded with humidity, any storm that does develop has greater potential to develop into an intense storm,” says Tselioudis.”

However (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080812160615.htm): “We designed the computer simulations to show that as the ocean temperature increased, hurricanes would form more rapidly and easily, even in the presence of wind shear,” says Nolan, associate professor of Meteorology at the Rosenstiel School. “Instead, we got exactly the opposite result. As the water temperature increased, the effectiveness of the wind shear in suppressing hurricane formation actually became greater.” (…)

http://www.ipcc-wg2.gov/SREX/images/uploads/SREX-SPMbrochure_FINAL.pdf:
“The uncertainties in the historical tropical cyclone records, the incomplete understanding of the physical mechanisms linking tropical cyclone metrics to climate change, and the degree of tropical cyclone variability provide only low confidence for the attribution of any detectable changes in tropical cyclone activity to anthropogenic influences. ATTRIBUTION OF SINGLE EXTREME EVENTS TO ANTHROPOGENIC CLIMATE CHANGE IS CHALLENGING.”
“Projected changes in climate extremes under different emissions scenarios generally do not strongly diverge in the coming two to three decades, but these signals are RELATIVELY SMALL COMPARED to natural climate variability over this time frame.”

Sandy is the result summing: positive AMO, PDO (probably the summation is once every few hundred years old), and natural cyclical changes in the “tour” and the strength of the jet stream (now weakens and meanders – consequent effect of low solar activity 2008-10?) impact on regional atmospheric patterns blockade – strengthening the blockade (cooled air here – Canada).

It’s clear that the Warmists are desperate. Remember a few years back when some sceptics pointed to freezing events and Warmists argued, quite rightly, that it was just the weather. Today they have done a U-turn and cling to weather events to prove global warming climate change.

So which is it Warmists? Where is the peer reviewed research clearly showing that hurricanes strength is getting worse??? Before you answer see Doplar Radar, satellites, mobile phones, more people, property etc.

One of the problems with the entire debate is the fact that the phrase “Global Warming” has come to mean “Man-made Global Warming” and/or “Catastrophic Man-made Global Warming.” Sandra may very well be a function of “Globally Warmer Indicators” for all I know, but we don’t even have all of the data yet….that will take months.

That Mosher feels compelled to assign cause-n-effect [“Global Warming” caused Sandra] isn’t really a surprise to me (He’s a lukewarmer after all), but the fact that he’s confident to announce it NOW *is* a surprise, since he’s usually touting restraint on such conclusions when we don’t have all the data. But I think he uses the phrase “Global Warming” in its literal sense…not the CAGW manifestation.

However, it should be pointed out that hurricane Hazel hit during the halcyon time period that NASA GISS uses to define “normal” (1950 – 1980). All weather during this period was perfectly normal – temperatures, precipitation. Even CO2 was normal. Life was good. Today, of course, everything is “anomalous,” “unprecedented”, and “abnormal”.

No warming for around 14 years….but CO2 has increased so where’s the correlation? Also now that the MWP has been restored there is nothing exceptional compared with anything we have seen for a thousand years. This was a storm caused by a number of freakish events….but the general public will believe it is to do with AGW. [snip . . OT . . mod]

Somewhat off topic and won’t be offended if this doesn’t pass moderation, but I’m curious what effect the hurricane had on sea surface temperatures? How wide, how deep, how much? Is there anything that would show this?

The poll now reads 2/3 “no” and 1/3 “yes.” Expect gratuitous insults from AGW acolytes about how stupid and ignorant the public is (and maybe add how they cling to their guns and religion, for good measure).

Of course, it’s more nuanced than simply “caused by”.
I think Dan Miller’s position (from the James Hansen link) puts the position of most Alarmists more succinctly:
“No one is saying that a Hurricane Sandy would not have happened if not for climate change. But I believe there is little doubt that the record-breaking scale and potential destructiveness of Sandy is due in large part to the amplifying effects of warmer ocean temperatures, higher atmospheric moisture content, and unusual Arctic weather patterns.”
Whenever an Alarmist spews the phrase “there is little doubt”, you just know they are going to come out with the biggest pile of horse poo imaginable.
But, in addition to blowing smoke on the cause of storms like Sandy, the implication is always that there is a large, “proven” human fingerprint on those “amplifying effects”.
So, they pile horse poo on top of horse poo, creating a sort of “Frankenpoo”.

Kevin Trenberth is NOT in the neutral category. He was on Radio New Zealand yesterday saying we could expect more of this sort of thing (hurricane Sandy) as oceans warmed etc etc etc. He clearly linked Sandy with global warming.

@Doug Proctor October 30, 2012 at 5:15 pm
“Recall how only professional scientists had a right to an opinion of this sort? That would kinda cut the left side down a bit, don’t you think?”

As close as I can tell the story after reading it 50 years ago:
A: “I believe that colds are caused by XXX (much detail and length here). Oh, by the way, I’m Billie Burke of Hollywood.”
B: “How do you do. I am Dr. YYY of the Mayo Clinic.”
End of conversation.

Voted, but had a little trouble. Couldn’t see the “Not bl**dy likely” Button.

An interesting point, I have just learned that the surge reached the high tide mark as it was in 1609 when there were oyster beds in Pearl Street … I think Joe Bastardi is right, with the Atlantic warm and the Pacific in a cooler phase more storms will make landfall.

George Lakoff
A familiar name from the 60’s, when I was a grad student at UCLA. I didn’t realize that a degree in linguistics could qualify you to make pronouncements in climate science. Guess I’d better get my name on the Oregon Petition.
John Slayton
MA, Linguistics

My research has shown excess levels of hot air coming from alarmist mouths (Verbalis Profluvium) may have caused this storm. I intend to milk the human suffering from Sandy by repeating this meme to further my own agenda and to use my own words as proof of my theory. In case anyone questions my data (not available upon request) I have adjusted for the background noise of deniers to show a hockey stick and thus proof.

Be scared, be very scared. Indeed the energy loss to space in this event was tragic. It’s gone forever. In spurts, the current and temporary faux “melt age” will reveal its true persona, the cold, ice covered 4/5ths death.

I believe the hurricane itself is a standard tropical Atlantic cyclone. It seemed to follow a normal track until it encountered a high pressure zone west of Greenland which caused it to approach land in a perpendicular manner which is unique.
The storms direction, coupled with hitting during a full moon high tide, caused an incredibly large storm surge.
As for the damage, I haven’t seen it discussed yet, but I will certainly be looking for information on the impact of the land filling of Manhattan island which has significantly changed the nature of lower Manhattan over the last 150 years.

Here, in one long, breathless sentence, is the complete answer to the bed-wetters who say global warming caused Sandy:

Extreme weather comes and goes in cycles (get used to it); occasionally you get a rare concatenation of circumstances (as we scientists say, “s–t happens”); there are more weather-watching instruments now than there were (think satellites); more reports of bad weather circulate (and reach a wider audience than ever); climate extremists unimpressively blame global warming for opposite extremes (heat and cold, flood and drought); there has been far too little warming so far to make any major difference (1 degree F in 60 years); the warming of recent years is well within natural variability (from 1695-1735, before man could have been to blame, central England warmed by 4 degrees F in just 40 years); extreme events are just as likely in cooler as in warmer weather (mathematically speaking, the climate behaves chaotically); warmer weather causes fewer storms, not more (thanks to temperature differentials that diminish as the world warms); there has been no acceleration in the rate of global warming (it’s stopped for now); and the knock-down argument is that there has been no global warming for almost 16 years (none of the discredited models predicted that: instead, in 2008 the modelers said that 15 years or more without global warming would demonstrate a discrepancy between their computer predictions and real-world observations and measurements).

There was a study published in Nature (I know) in 2007 that studied hurricane activity in the Caribbean over the past 5000 years using sand sediment cores from a lagoon. You can read the full abstract here , but I thought this part was interesting:

Comparison of the sediment record with palaeo-climate records indicates that this variability was probably modulated by atmospheric dynamics associated with variations in the El Niño/Southern Oscillation and the strength of the West African monsoon, and suggests that sea surface temperatures as high as at present are not necessary to support intervals of frequent intense hurricanes.

since the 60′s, public schools have been promulgating stupid.
cagw is directly related to stupid.
…

Hmmm … the ‘stupid’ would seem to track the promulgation or fan-out of TV, which bred it’s own form of ‘pop’ culture (I’m thinking of American Bandstand now) … as the Bell System matured and installed wideband (Television capable bandwidth; 4.5 MHz for a black and white NTSC signal in those days) transmission circuits between cities (including coaxial cable and the early TD-2 microwave network) telecasts from local television studios received a wider audience than was previously possible before the 1960’s …

We need to get Robin (of Invisible Serf’s Collar) on this … this would blend in well with her present study-subject.

I don’t see a downward tend in ACE. Rather than trying to link GW with any particular storm, it seems to me that the total season’s energy drawn from the ocean would be the best possible connection point.

Prior to extensive human fossil fuel usage, life expectancy was much shorter. Therefore I blame “Satan’s Rock” – not for the storm, but for the fact that I lived long enough to see it. Dratted fossil fuels!

This morning on the News it is being claimed that “Superstorm” Sandy has claimed 70 lives, and it is tragic and very upsetting to see the names and photos of people who have lost there lives and to learn the circumstances of their deaths. it is horrible. My heart goes out to those families.

I’d like to know and understand how the same TV station ignore and refused to report on major meteorological events that killed hundreds.

I will only mention one report. do your own investigation on this. “human cost” and people who have died are being unfairly represented.

Kristoff has an NYT editorial where he highlights Sandy as our wake-up call. His article flip-flops between declaring Sandy a product of global warming, and saying Sandy was not caused by global warming, but that Sandy does serve to illustrate what global warming will bring in the future.
He notes a couple details that contributed to the ‘perfect-storm’ conditions, and acknowledges that there have been storms of similar magnitude across history, yet then proceeds on to attribute this storm to neither established range of normal variability, or to a unique blend of circumstances ot create the perfect-storm situation, but to global warming.

Messy thinking.
There are great comments. There are also comments from plenty of ppl who mix up here/now with future apocalypse.
NYT cut off comments at a paltry 156. Why? Probably because people are exposing the global-warming witch-hunt doomsday cult fear-mongering for what it is.

I would urge ppl to comment, but the NYT seems to have had their fill of decent, thoughtful comments.

There is a clear link between those that say yes and those that say no. The link is the ones that say yes don’t have a clue about weather or/and are activists, so not surprising their knowledge of weather history and mechanisms/physics are seriously lacking generally (odd exception).

Serious questions to any saying yes, what is the difference between a hurricane that is influenced by AGW to one that is not? How can AGW create a hurricane that would otherwise by a bit of cloud with little rainfall? The reason being created from nothing seems to be the awful uneducated assumption.

There are many reason we brought about reasoning to Sandy, we bring up the issue of global warming, politics, and other more. All these things happening in all the countries in the world is just giving us a message!!! We contribute to Global Warming, politics got nothing to do with Sandy but the Bible already says that during this last days things will happen to show that the time is near and we need to repent. Geography expert bring up ideas summing up all recent activities but no one got the answer.

all we gotta do is be prepared cause this is not the end its just the begining of every happening that will happen in this world.

Thank you for being scientific and not political. My question is when all the scientists on tv are actually politicians, what will happen to science? But I guess the military industrial complex will keep records. Maybe it’s not “global warming” whatever the heck that made up term is.. Maybe it’s the intentional and elaborate daily spraying of billions of tons of chemicals by drones and western militaries and NATO into our skies? They turn our blue skies in to white/grey polarized reflector and make the sun blaze half the sky, instead of where just the quarter-sized sun is shining. Or they spray different formulations of chemicals that form “clouds” from the dirty chem trails. They are already using HAARP to alter the atmosphere and electrifying the atmosphere to intensify smaller storms. “What in the World are they Spraying” a documentary on youtube.

Global warming is the best thing since sliced bread ! It started in the 1840’s before anyone used oil,gas or much coal. But it is not influenced by man when the main influence is solar, and the greatest greehouse effects come from water vapour, not co2. In fact we a coming up out of a temperature low into the normal range again after about 300 years in a cool region. Get your fact straight from the “Global Warming Petition Project ” found on the web and written by real scientists not one who wish to rule by force!

One thing IS clear, though. Everyone is now aware that climate change is real, and the debate is almost over now, whether or not they believe northeastercaine Sandy was caused by global warming, which it was not.

When is the national weather service going to own up to the massive failure of not calling sandy a hurricane north of NC – VA border? A failure that gave millions a false sense of security. Instead they referred to it as a “post tropical cyclone” which no one on the east coast has ever heard of and sounds like a very weakened storm.